The ground state and the character of the interaction between a colloidal particles in a liquid crystals

TL;DR

This paper introduces a general approach to understanding how colloidal particles interact within liquid crystals by analyzing the deformation of the director field's ground state, predicting Coulomb-like interactions and their variations.

Contribution

It presents a novel method to determine colloidal interactions in liquid crystals based on ground state deformations, predicting Coulomb-like interactions and their changes.

Findings

Coulomb-like interaction predicted between dipole particles in cholesteric liquid crystals.

The character of interactions can change in smectic liquid crystals.

Ground state deformations restrict possible particle interactions.

Abstract

In this article is proposed the general approach to determination the character of the interaction between colloidal particles in a different liquid crystals. The main idea of this approach are in the presentation of the colloidal particle as sours of the possible deformation of the ground state of the director field. The ground state of liquid crystal imposes restrictions on the possible deformations and as result determine the character of the interaction between the colloidal particles. Based on this approach the Coulomb like interaction between dipole particles in a cholesteric liquid crystal and changing of the character of the interaction in a smactic liquid crystal has been predicted.